Buddha's tooth helps Hong Kong celebrate a holy exchange

Hong Kong has lost a queen but gained a Buddha - and everyone is delighted by the exchange.

Today, with great ceremony, the sacred relic of the Buddha's Tooth, flown in from Beijing, will go on show in a Hong Kong stadium. It is here to mark the first time that Hong Kong celebrates the birthday of the Holy One.

'Our efforts have been answered,' said an official of the Hong Kong Buddhist Association, which unsuccessfully lobbied the British colonial government for decades to have May 22 recognised as the birthday of the Sakyamuni Buddha. The Brits have gone, and the Queen's Birthday is now no more. Even before the 1997 handover the Buddha was vastly more popular than the monarch, except with a handful of local officials who got medals from her.

The Hong Kong chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, will join Chinese Buddhist officials at a ceremony today in the Hong Kong Coliseum. A week of celebrations will follow, culminating in a vegetarian banquet for charity.

Local businesses are being invited to book a banquet table at the very reasonable price - by Hong Kong standards - of £1,440.

There are high hopes that the Buddha's tooth will also help to revive tourism in Hong Kong.

The relic is so precious that no one will insure it, and it arrived yesterday in a chartered plane with tight security throughout the journey.

Projectors will be installed at the Coliseum so that visitors can see it on screen.

The Holy Tooth usually resides in the Tooth Relic Pagoda in the western hills area of Beijing. According to tradition, after the Buddha attained Nirvana his body was cremated and a number of teeth were found in the ashes.

It is said that the Beijing tooth was brought from India in the 5th century by the monk Faxian, together with the first Buddhist scriptures.

A second authenticated Holy Tooth is enshrined in Sri Lanka. A tooth controversy broke out last year when Taiwan claimed it had acquired a third.

When the British and other foreign powers invaded north China in 1900, after the Boxer rebellion, and occupied Beijing, they destroyed the pagoda where the tooth had been placed and forgotten many centuries before.

On clearing away the rubble, the monks found a stone casket in which the tooth relic was preserved.